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Why Using the Internet in China is So Frustrating These Days

For expatriates living in China, the list of gripes that come with facing everyday life is long. Generally among those complaints sit Internet speed, pollution and food safety. But in recent weeks concern about the Internet has taken primacy as access to websites – especially foreign websites and virtual private networks, or VPNs, which allow users to circumvent Chinese Internet filters – has deteriorated.

The likely reason is the weeklong 18th Party Congress, a highly scripted but nevertheless critical political event scheduled to culminate with the unveiling of Communist Party’s next generation of leaders.

Reuters

Chinese authorities routinely move to exert more control over the Internet around big meetings and politically sensitive dates, including by disrupting traffic to foreign websites outside the country’s censorship system, commonly referred to as the Great Firewall. But a number of users have complained of unusually frequent disruptions in the run-up to the 18th Party Congress, with some saying they had all but given up trying to use Google’s search engine and email service.

Data from CloudFlare Inc., a company that provides web performance and security services for hundreds of thousands of websites, confirms that Internet users inside China are not just imagining things. CloudFlare Chief Executive Matthew Prince said the company’s engineers and consumers have reported increased difficulties with traffic out of China beginning at the end of August.

Foreigners and a savvy minority of Chinese Internet users have typically gotten around blocks of Western sites like Facebook and Youtube with VPNs, which form an encrypted link to a server outside of the country, thereby directing traffic around China’s Internet filters. But in recent weeks VPNs as well have been targeted, with two separate VPN companies telling China Real Time that they have noticed an uptick in blockages and interferences.

A spokesman for Witopia said the recent disruption is “one of the most severe” the company had ever seen.

“We’ve been in this business for almost eight years and have had customers in China since the beginning. The Chinese government definitely reminds us now and again that they ultimately control their part of the Internet, and disruptions definitely increase surrounding political events,” he added.

He explained that it is quite easy for a network owner, be it a government or a coffee shop manager, to block, filter or interfere with VPN protocols or any other type of network traffic. But in order to avoid completely isolating a network or country, the manager of the network must leave some doors open.

“China, with their globalized economy and growth rate, obviously cannot completely isolate themselves from the global Internet or it would exact a significant cost on their economy. It likely already is. They just seem to like to remind everyone that they are the boss of their corner of the Internet and they will integrate with the rest of us at their own pace,” he said.

But while VPNs and a range of websites have suffered due to the sensitivity of the Congress, there doesn’t appear to have been many complaints, outside of the normal grumbling, from users of Chinese social media websites like Sina Corp.’s Weibo microblogging platform. That likely indicates the government has been content to target the general Internet and not social media, according to analysts – a somewhat surprising approach given authorities’ willingness to take drastic action to curb discussion on social media sites in the past.

Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of Danwei.com and a longtime observer of Chinese media, said the government has likely not cracked down on social media because its current levels of censorship are already high, adding that he was unable to search for the term “national chairman” on Sina’s Weibo earlier Wednesday.

“When you’re looking at that level of filtering, of ridiculous paranoia, how are they going to turn up the dial much more?” he said.

Nonetheless he pointed out that the stakes are high for China’s social media companies, who he said likely had employees working overtime this week to ensure China’s boisterous and ever clever microbloggers don’t get out of hand.

“I would be willing to say, 100% sure, that all the big [Internet] companies are under notice like every other lead organization that no trouble is to emerge on their platform for the next couple of weeks,” he said.